Danny Donabedian wrote:
Assuming a pan-psychist view of consciousness for a moment, with the potential for suffering subroutines to extend to fundamental physical particles and the simplest of physical systems, I am unsure if more complex systems like those found in living creatures and their neural networks or even unicellular organisms increase or decrease net suffering.
If it turns out that net universal suffering decreases when matter is incorporated into more complex (life-like) systems, I guess we must switch it to have more babies.
While I don’t necessarily believe that, I do believe that it can’t be excluded as a possibility due to the significant s-risk involved with making such a mistake if it turns out to be true. I guess a third option would be that the suffering of simple systems is no greater or less than complex systems.
Though if I had to give a reason per say why one might think simple systems contain more suffering, perhaps a cessation of suffering, a tranquilism, or knowledge/certainty of its attainment, is only observed in certain complex systems and is an emergent property of those systems.
Timothy Chan wrote:
Does that idea that complexity decreases net suffering rely on the consciousnesses of simple systems being cancelled by being incorporated into a complex one though? If that’s the idea I’m not too sure about the intuition behind that. It seems difficult to draw a boundary around a system and say that it’s the ‘terminal’ system that cancels everything simpler.
Danny Donabedian wrote:
Even if their consciousnesses weren’t fully canceled during such an incorporation, perhaps the simpler systems are affected in some other positive manner (with the suffering component of consciousness broadcasted upstream?). But I agree with you that carving up boundaries is challenging and at least not possible for the time being.
Manu Herrán wrote:
Another (scary) very similar hypothesys is that the basic state of simple matter is intense suffering and it thrives to more complex systems in an attempt to avoid that suffering. I put that idea long ago on lyrics of a song called Hypothesis Mass of a Death Metal band called Mortem Tirana.
Danny Donabedian wrote:
That’s similar to but a better/updated model reminiscent of the buddhist approach to realms where hellishness seems to be very simple and correlates with decreased complexity and intense craving, and its converse, happy godliness is associated with max complexity and less overall craving compared to the lower realms.
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This conversation takes place in July 2020 in a thread started by Wolf Bullmann in the “Sounds like something Brian Tomasik would be against but ok” private facebook group. Excerpts taken with the consent of the authors.